“They include narratives such as the Earth is flat, the 2020 election was rigged or stolen, and COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous,” according to the News Literacy Project report.

Although teens don’t believe every conspiracy theory they see, 81% of those who see such content online say they believe one or more.

Bowman noted, “However dangerous or harmful they may be, these narratives are designed to be engaging and satisfy deep psychological needs, such as the need for community and understanding. Being a conspiracy theorist or believing in a conspiracy theory can be part of someone’s identity. It is not necessarily a label that an individual will hesitate to share with others.

At the same time, the report reveals that the bar is low for providing media education. Only six states have guidelines on how to teach media literacy, and only three make it a requirement in public schools.

According to the analysis, less than 40% of adolescents surveyed reported receiving media literacy training during the 2023-2024 school year.

Credible sources

As part of collecting data for the report, teens were asked to try to distinguish between different types of information they might encounter online. They were also challenged to identify real or fake photos and judge whether a news source is credible.

The study asked participants to identify a series of articles as advertisements, opinions or news articles.

More than half of teens failed to identify branded content — a news article about plant-based meat in the Washington Post news app — as an advertisement. About the same number did not realize that an article with a “commentary” in the title was about the opinion of the author.

They were better at recognizing Google’s “sponsored” results as ads, but about 40 percent of teens said they thought that meant those results were popular or high quality. Only 8 percent of teens correctly categorized the information in all three examples.

In another exercise, teens were asked to identify which of two pieces of content about Coca-Cola’s plastic waste was more credible: a Coca-Cola press release or a Reuters article. The results were too close to be reassuring for the report, with only 56 percent of teens choosing the Reuters article as more reliable.

Brand recognition might have played a role in teens’ decision to choose Coca-Cola over Reuters, Bowman says, feeling that a more recognizable company was more credible.

“Whatever the reason, I think news organizations engaging young people on social media and building trust and recognition there could have the potential to move an issue like this forward in the future,” Bowman said.

Check the facts

Where teens felt confident spotting pranks was through visuals.

Two-thirds of study participants said they could perform a reverse image search on Google to find the original source of an image. About 70% of teens could correctly distinguish between an AI-generated image and a real photograph.

To test the teens’ ability to spot misinformation, they were asked whether a social media photo of a melting traffic light was “strong evidence that hot temperatures in Texas have melted traffic lights.” circulation in July 2023”.

Most of the teens answered correctly, but about a third of them still thought the photo alone was strong evidence that the claim about melting traffic lights was true.

Bowman said the fact that there was no difference in students’ performance when the results were analyzed by age left her wondering whether teenagers “of all ages have received the message that they can’t always believe their eyes when it comes to the images they see online.

“Their radars appear to be up to the task when it comes to identifying manipulated, distorted or completely fabricated images,” Bowman continued. “Especially with recent advances and the availability of generative AI technologies, I wonder if it might be more difficult to convince them of the authenticity of a photo that is actually real and verified than to convince them that an image is wrong in one way or another.”

When it came to sharing on social media, teens expressed a strong desire to ensure their posts contained correct information. So how do they check the facts themselves, given that a minority of teenagers actively follow the news or have taken media literacy classes?

Among the teens who reported checking information before sharing it, Bowman said they practiced lateral reading, which she described as “a quick Internet search to investigate the source of the message” and a method employed by professional fact checkers.

Given a random group of teenagers, Bowman hypothesized that they would likely use much less effective ways of judging the credibility of a source, based on factors such as a website’s design or URL. website.

“In other words, previous research shows that young people tend to rely on outdated techniques or superficial criteria to determine the credibility of a source,” Bowman explained. “If schools across the country implemented quality information education, I am confident we could demystify old notions about how to determine credibility that are no longer effective in today’s information landscape Today and, instead, teach young people research-based auditing techniques that we know work. »

Stay actively informed

Although conspiracy theories often surface among teenagers, they don’t necessarily have the information to fend them off.

Teenagers are divided on whether they trust the news. Just over half of adolescents say journalists do more to protect society than to harm it. Nearly 70 percent said news organizations are biased, and 80 percent think news organizations are either more biased or about the same as other online content creators.

A minority of teens – just 15 percent – ​​actively seek out information to stay informed.

The study also asked teens to list news sources they trusted to provide accurate and fair information.

CNN and Fox News received the most mentions, with 178 and 133 mentions, respectively. TMZ, NPR and the Associated Press were tied with 12 mentions each.

Local TV news was the most trusted news outlet, followed by TikTok.

Teenagers agree on at least one thing: 94% of them believe that schools should be required to offer some level of media education.

“Young people know better than anyone everything they are supposed to learn before they graduate. So the fact that so many teens are saying they would appreciate an extra requirement on their already overloaded plate is a huge deal and a big recognition of how important a medium is. literacy,” Bowman said.

Throughout the study, students who received some level of media education performed better on the study’s test questions than their peers. They were more likely to be active information seekers, trust the media, and have more confidence in their ability to verify what they see online.

And, strangely, students who acquired media literacy in school report seeing more conspiracy theories on social media – perhaps precisely because they have more advanced media literacy skills.

“Adolescents who have received at least some media education, who keep up to date with current events and who have high levels of knowledge.

People who trust the media are all more likely to report seeing posts about conspiracy theories on social media at least once a week,” according to the report. “These differences could indicate that teens in these subgroups are more adept at spotting these types of posts or that their social media algorithms are more likely to serve them these types of posts, or both.”